A structure may include a horizontal building structure such as a shopping mall, a warehouse, storage and manufacturing facilities, large box stores such as IKEA®, The Home Depot®, a vertical structure such as a high rise building, a mid rise building, and a low rise building, a mine, a subway, a tunnel, and/or a wine cave. A structure may also include large ships (e.g., oil tankers, cruise liners, aircraft carriers, destroyers, troop transports, ferries, etc.) and/or other vehicles (e.g., tanks, buses, cargo planes, etc.) where access to breathable air may be useful in an emergency.
The tunnel, for example, may be substantially horizontal and have a ratio of the length of the passage to the width of at least two to one. In addition, the tunnel may be completely enclosed on all sides, and the openings may be saved for the length of the covered area causing limited accessibility to the tunnel.
Providing and maintaining adequate safety in the structure may be of importance. For example, serious or fatal accidents occurring in underground mines in United States over the years may have resulted from an inability to control roofs of the underground mines. A fatal accident can occur, for example, from falling of even one large rock from the roof of the mine.
In a case of an emergency situation of the structure, emergency personnel (e.g., a fire fighter, a SWAT team, a law enforcer, and/or a medical worker, etc.) may be deployed to the structure to alleviate the emergency situation through mitigating a source of hazard as well as rescuing stranded civilians from the structure The emergency situation may include events such as a fire, a chemical attack, a terror attack, a subway accident, a mine collapse, and/or a biological agent attack.
In such situations, breathable air inside the structure may be hazardously affected (e.g., depleted, absorbed, and/or contaminated). In addition, flow of fresh air into the structure may be significantly hindered due to the structure having enclosed regions, lack of windows, and/or high concentration of contaminants, etc. As a result, inhaling air in the structure may be extremely detrimental and may further result in death (e.g., within minutes). Furthermore, emergency work may often need to be performed from within the structure.
The emergency personnel's ability to alleviate the emergency in an efficient manner may be significantly limited by the lack of breathable air and/or abundance of contaminated air. A survival rate of stranded civilians in the structure may substantially decrease due to a propagation of contaminated air through out the structure, placing a large number of innocent lives at significant risk.
As such, the emergency personnel may utilize a portable breathable air apparatus (e.g., self-contained breathable air apparatus) as a source of breathable air during an emergency incident and/or a rescue mission. However, the portable breathable air apparatus may be heavy (e.g., 20-30 pounds) and/or may provide breathable air for a short while (e.g., approximately 15-30 minutes). In the emergency situation, the emergency personnel may need to walk, descend and/or climb to a particular location within the structure to perform rescuing work due to inoperable transport systems (e.g., obstructed walkway, elevators, moving sidewalks, and/or escalators, etc.)
As such, by the time the emergency personnel reach the particular location, his/her portable breathable air apparatus may be already depleted and may require replenishment (e.g., via a shuttle method or returning back to a previous location for a new portable breathable air apparatus). As a result, precious lives may be lost due to precious time being lost. An extra supply of portable breathable air apparatuses may be stored throughout the structure so that emergency personnel can replace their portable breathable air apparatuses within the structure. However, supplying structures with spare portable breathable air apparatuses may be expensive and take up space in the structure, thereby causing severe handicap to the ability of emergency personnel to perform rescue tasks.
Furthermore, management, supervisors, personnel, etc., may not regularly inspect the spare portable breathable air apparatuses. With time, the spare portable breathable air apparatuses may experience pressure loss placing the emergency personnel at significant risk when the spare breathable air apparatus is utilized in the emergency situation. The spare portable breathable air apparatuses may also be tampered with, during storage. Contaminants may be introduced into the spare portable breathable air apparatuses that may be detrimental to the emergency personnel.